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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25332049">the revenant stumbles</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poe/pseuds/Poe'>Poe</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(but he gets better), 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, And then post for the last one, Angst, Body Horror, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Heavy Angst, Immortality, Internal Monologue, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, Mild Sexual Content, POV Bucky Barnes, Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, The Old Guard AU, The little death counts as a death right?, There is NO FLUFF HERE, What if I made every bad thing that happened to Bucky WORSE, oh no, this is not a place of honour</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 06:14:52</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,421</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25332049</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poe/pseuds/Poe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"The first time Bucky comes back there’s a knife in his belly, the hilt gleaming rust red and shiny and moving as he breathes and panics and tries with slick fingers to fumble for it. He’s twenty three years old and he should be dead and he isn’t, and if he knew then what he would know a century from that day, he would think it was irony. "</p><p>*</p><p>Or: The Old Guard AU, except it's only Bucky. Five times Bucky dies alone + one time someone's there with him.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>85</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>the revenant stumbles</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/ACometAppears/gifts">ACometAppears</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>You don't need to have seen The Old Guard before watching this (though you definitely should, PHEW) - it's pretty self-explanatory. Bucky can't die.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>i.</strong>
</p><p>The first time Bucky comes back there’s a knife in his belly, the hilt gleaming rust red and shiny and moving as he breathes and panics and tries with slick fingers to fumble for it. He’s twenty three years old and he should be dead and he isn’t, and if he knew then what he would know a century from that day, he would think it was irony.</p><p>He grasps the knife handle, and pulls, and the noise it makes makes him gag and sweat and shiver. Fresh red spurts out, and he – presses a hand to it, watches it drip through his fingers and slide down and pool beside him, calm in a way that isn’t calm at all, is past any damn sense. He waits until the blood slows, and pulls his hand away, the pale skin of his belly something closer to a horror story now, and he watches as his skin knits back together, feeling too tight for a second before releasing – and then not even a scar left behind.</p><p><em>God doesn’t want you, and none of his angels neither</em>, he thinks to himself and barks out a laugh. He sits up and leaves the stain on the dirt behind him. The first drops of rain fall on his forehead, tracing patterns down the side of his nose. The rain will wash away the death of this place, and Bucky will remain.</p><p>Steve is asleep when he gets home, and Bucky tosses the ruined shirt and pants in the trash, before scrubbing himself raw in pink tinged water, the bristles of the nail brush eking out the horror of it. He sinks beneath the surface and watches through the water as the air bubbles out of him, borrowed, never kept, and thinks <em>I am less and more and I am forsaken</em>.</p><p>Steve can never know.</p><p>*</p><p>
  <strong>ii.</strong>
</p><p>War kills quickly and efficiently and Bucky comes back faster, a bullet that blows out his shoulder stopping him only long enough for him to catch his breath; gas in his lungs suffocating until it’s not. He sees men blown apart by guns that have no earthly right existing, and he calls for surrender.</p><p>He does not want to live in pieces.</p><p>The flashes of blue stop, and he breathes heavy and hard. He’s rounded up, they’re all rounded up, <em>cattle</em>, prodded forward into marching like toddling infants. He’s so tired. He trips, falls to his knees, scuffs his palms. They’re bloody for a second before his lifeline comes back again, bold as ever. And he thinks to himself <em>Is this a mockery? Is this the fate you planned for me?</em> And then he stands again, brushing his palms against muddy pants, clenching his fists until the tendons strain. Bone white knuckles and trembling legs and the certainty that what awaits him is worse than dying. <em>Dying’s easy</em>.</p><p>He’s not wrong. Dying’s the easiest thing he’s ever had to do. And he keeps doing it. Until there’s blood in his throat from screaming. Anyone can die.</p><p>The shudder sharp burst of life that splinters through his limbs as his body refuses to let go?</p><p>That’s the bit that makes him so fuckin’ exciting to the men who stare down at him.</p><p>*</p><p>
  <strong>iii.</strong>
</p><p>Steve crowds him up against the wall and kisses him like he’s drowning, gasping and shaking and needy, grasping and trying to find a way above water. Steve’s taller than him now, and he’s beautiful with it, a different kind of beauty to before, but no less haunting. Steve looks at him with blown pupils and messed up lips and tells him about how he thought he died but then he didn’t, and Bucky thinks, <em>god, not you too</em>.</p><p>Steve rests his forehead against Bucky’s as he pulls at Bucky’s zipper, whining when his too big fingers get in the way of each other. Bucky guides him through it, the way he always has, and Steve touches him and Bucky can’t keep his eyes open suddenly – and loses himself to the darkness, enveloped and crushed bone deep by it, until he tilts towards the light of it, brighter and brighter and brighter until he hears himself cry out, and the darkness breaks and he’s floating, far above everything but propped up by Steve, and he should say something, but his tongue is thick in his mouth and Steve has other plans besides, so he says nothing, fumbling through actions that used to come easy as breathing but now feel ill-rehearsed.</p><p><em>Love you, love you, love you</em>, Steve pants, and Bucky breaks apart, feeling for all the world like those mosaics they dig up, perfect in places but missing huge chunks out of ‘em.</p><p><em>Never had a chance to bury me, did they?</em> He thinks, <em>and yet here I am</em>.</p><p>*</p><p>
  <strong>iv.</strong>
</p><p>Shrapnel hits his face and rends it until it feels tattered and barely there. He raises a hand to torn away skin and finds the place where his nose should be. He feels down to exposed teeth and the sharp crack of half a missing jaw.</p><p>There’s a ringing in the air and he stares up at the sky, when did he fall down? Why can’t he stay down? He feels his lips grow back. He watches his nose jut back out of his face as he looks down the line of it. His jaw creaks and groans and so does he, but it rebuilds, and he spits out blood and bone and metal and sits up.</p><p>He wonders how much blood he has left to lose.</p><p>He wipes his face on his sleeve and calls out.</p><p>“Is anyone hurt?”</p><p><em>No</em>, they say, <em>no, it missed us, we’re okay, we’re okay, oh god, that was close.</em></p><p>Bucky smiles a new old smile and grits his teeth together. They feel too clean.</p><p>*</p><p>
  <strong>v.</strong>
</p><p>He falls.</p><p>Perhaps he’s been falling for years.</p><p>It takes time. Longer than he’d’ve thought. Dying takes time. He watches Steve get smaller and smaller and then the train rushes him away and Bucky keeps falling and he has time to think – <em>maybe this is it</em>.</p><p>It’s not, of course.</p><p>*</p><p>
  <strong>+i.</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>“I thought you died.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I didn’t.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I know.”</em>
</p><p>A bullet meant for Steve, like his name had been carved on it and Bucky had scratched it out until it couldn’t shoot straight anymore and hit him instead.</p><p>Right through the heart, pulse seizing around it like a fist. He gulps in air and Steve’s arms are around him and he thinks <em>it’s okay Stevie, I’ll be back in a minute</em>.</p><p>And Steve holds him and begs and pleads and Bucky listens from very far away until his jackhammer heart shoves and the bullet plops out of his chest, unnoticed, and Bucky is back, again, always again, <em>back and back and back</em>, but this time Steve’s there, Steve’s hands covered in so much blood, and there’s no way to pretend his way out of this, so he finds Steve’s gaze, those blue eyes that are the closest thing to home he has, how could he ever die if it meant leaving those behind?</p><p>And Steve knows.</p><p>Steve kisses him half broken, half full of god’s honest relief. Kisses him with blood still on his tongue. Kisses him like he’s fighting. Maybe he is.</p><p>“Don’t do that to me again,” Steve says, and Bucky can’t promise. Won’t promise. He’d do it a thousand times over if it meant he got to see those eyes one last time.</p><p>“What are you?” Steve wonders aloud, later, a palm to the skin above Bucky’s heart, tapping fingers in time with the beat.</p><p><em>I’m Bucky</em>, Bucky thinks.</p><p>He shrugs, instead, because he just <em>is</em>. Maybe always will be. Too damn stubborn to die.</p><p>There aren’t words for cheating death, except to acknowledge that death abhors cheaters. Except – maybe He respects them too. Because to cheat death, well, you gotta be something special.</p><p>“How many times have you saved my life, and I didn’t even know it?” Steve asks, fingers still tapping away. “What did you give up for me?”</p><p>Nothing. Everything. All the in between bits. Six feet of dirt pressing down on his soul and the sad drape of flowers overhead.</p><p><em>Are you what anchors me?</em> He thinks. <em>Are you the thing keeping me here?</em></p><p>Heaven blue eyes and a smile like sin, and hair like all the gold of all the kingdoms.</p><p>
  <em>Is this a trade I made? Do I walk ‘til I drop for you?</em>
</p><p>So be it.  </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I AM SO SORRY OH MY GOD. My brain was literally like 'you could write the bad thing, you could', and as I was procrastinating from, ya know, writing something I could get paid for, I definitely did write the bad thing. SORRY.</p><p>I am not an angst merchant by nature, so I promise whatever I write next will be fluffier (god, it can't Not be, really, huh?). </p><p>Watch The Old Guard. </p><p>All comments are amazing, no matter how short, or if they're just keysmashes or strings of emojis. Everything is good! </p><p>You can find me on tumblr at witcherling.tumblr.com or Twitter at twitter.com/imwiththebard (nobody appreciates that pun). Prompts are always open. </p><p>Thank you for reading. &lt;3</p></blockquote></div></div>
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